Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Shall I read you the letter, Aurora?”

  “If you please.”

  He took the crumpled epistle from his bosom, and, bending over the lamp, read it aloud to Aurora. He fully expected at every sentence that she would interrupt him with some eager explanation; but she was silent until he had finished, and even then she did not speak.

  “Aurora, Aurora, is this true?”

  “Perfectly true.”

  “But why did you run away from the Rue St. Dominique?”

  “I can not tell you.”

  “And where were you between the month of June in the year fifty-six and last September?”

  “I can not tell you, Talbot Bulstrode. This is my secret, which I can not tell you.”

  “You can not tell me! There is upward of a year missing from your life, and you can not tell me, your betrothed husband, what you did with that year?”

  “I can not.”

  “Then, Aurora Floyd, you can never be my wife.”

  He thought that she would turn upon him, sublime in her indignation and fury, and that the explanation he longed for would burst from her lips in a passionate torrent of angry words; but she rose from her chair, and, tottering toward him, fell upon her knees at his feet. No other action could have struck such terror to his heart. It seemed to him a confession of guilt. But what guilt? what guilt? What was the dark secret of this young creature’s brief life?

  “Talbot Bulstrode,” she said in a tremulous voice, which cut him to the soul, “Talbot Bulstrode, Heaven knows how often I have foreseen and dreaded this hour. Had I not been a coward, I should have anticipated this explanation. But I thought — I thought the occasion might never come, or that, when it did come, you would be generous — and — trust me. If you can trust me, Talbot — if you can believe that this secret is not utterly shameful—”

  “Not utterly shameful!” he cried. “O God, Aurora, that I should ever hear you talk like this! Do you think there are any degrees in these things? There must be no secret between my wife and me; and the day that a secret, or the shadow of one, arises between us, must see us part for ever. Rise from your knees, Aurora; you are killing me with this shame and humiliation. Rise from your knees; and if we are to part this moment, tell me, tell me, for pity’s sake, that I have no need to despise myself for having loved you with an intensity which has scarcely been manly.”

  She did not obey him, but sank lower in her half kneeling, half crouching attitude, her face buried in her hands, and only the coils of her black hair visible to Captain Bulstrode.

  “I was motherless from my cradle, Talbot,” she said, in a half stifled voice. “Have pity upon me.”

  “Pity!” echoed the captain; “pity! Why do you not ask me for justice? One question, Aurora Floyd, one more question, perhaps the last I ever may ask of you — Does your father know why you left that school, and where you were during that twelvemonth?”

  “He does.”

  “Thank God, at least, for that! Tell me, Aurora, then, only tell me this, and I will believe your simple word as I would the oath of another woman — tell me if he approved of your motive in leaving that school — if he approved of the manner in which your life was spent during that twelvemonth. If you can say yes, Aurora, there shall be no more questions between us, and I can make you, without fear, my loved and honored wife.”

  “I can not,” she answered. “I am only nineteen, but within the two last years of my life I have done enough to break my father’s heart — to break the heart of the dearest father that ever breathed the breath of life.”

  “Then all is over between us. God forgive you, Aurora Floyd; but, by your own confession, you are no fit wife for an honorable man. I shut my mind against all foul suspicions; but the past life of my wife must be a white, unblemished page, which all the world may be free to read.”

  He walked toward the door, and then, returning, assisted the wretched girl to rise, and led her back to her seat by the window, courteously, as if she had been his partner at a ball. Their hands met with as icy a touch as the hands of two corpses. Ah! how much there was of death in that touch! How much had died between those two within the last few hours — hope, confidence, security, love, happiness, all that makes life worth the holding.

  Talbot Bulstrode paused upon the threshold of the little chamber, and spoke once more.

  “I shall have left Felden in half an hour, Miss Floyd,” he said; “it will be better to allow your father to suppose that the disagreement between us has arisen from something of a trifling nature, and that my dismissal has come from you. I shall write to Mr. Floyd from London, and, if you please, I will so word my letter as to lead him to think this.”

  “You are very good,” she answered. “Yes, I would rather that he should think that. It may spare him pain. Heaven knows I have cause to be grateful for anything that will do that.”

  Talbot bowed, and left the room, closing the door behind him. The closing of that door had a dismal sound to his ear. He thought of some frail young creature abandoned by her sister-nuns in a living tomb. He thought that he would rather have left Aurora lying rigidly beautiful in her coffin than as he was leaving her to-day.

  The jangling, jarring sound of the second dinner-bell clanged out as he went from the semi-obscurity of the corridor into the glaring gas-light of the billiard-room. He met Lucy Floyd coming toward him in her rustling silk dinner-dress, with fringes, and laces, and ribbons, and jewels fluttering and sparkling about her, and he almost hated her for looking so bright and radiant, remembering, as he did, the ghastly face of the stricken creature he had just left. We are apt to be horribly unjust in the hour of supreme trouble, and I fear that if any one had had the temerity to ask Talbot Bulstrode’s opinion of Lucy Floyd just at that moment, the captain would have declared her to be a mass of frivolity and affectation. If you discover the worthlessness of the only woman you love upon earth, you will perhaps be apt to feel maliciously disposed toward the many estimable people about you. You are savagely inclined when you remember that they for whom you care nothing are so good, while she on whom you set your soul is so wicked. The vessel which you freighted with every hope of your heart has gone down, and you are angry at the very sight of those other ships riding so gallantly before the breeze. Lucy recoiled at the aspect of the young man’s face.

  “What is it?” she asked; “what has happened, Captain Bulstrode?”

  “Nothing; I have received a letter from Cornwall which obliges me to—”

  His hollow voice died away into a hoarse whisper before he could finish the sentence.

  “Lady Bulstrode — or Sir John — is ill, perhaps?” hazarded Lucy.

  Talbot pointed to his white lips and shook his head. The gesture might mean anything. He could not speak. The hall was full of visitors and children going into dinner. The little people were to dine with their seniors that day, as an especial treat and privilege of the season. The door of the dining-room was open, and Talbot saw the gray head of Archibald Floyd dimly visible at the end of a long vista of lights, and silver, and glass, and evergreens. The old man had his nephews and nieces, and their children grouped about him, but the place at his right hand, the place Aurora was meant to fill, was vacant. Captain Bulstrode turned away from that gayly-lighted scene and ran up the staircase to his room, where he found his servant waiting with his master’s clothes laid out, wondering why he had not come to dress.

  The man fell back at the sight of Talbot’s face, ghastly in the light of the wax candles on the dressing-table.

  “I am going away, Philman,” said the captain, speaking very fast, and in a thick, indistinct voice. “I am going down to Cornwall by the express to-night, if I can get to town in time to catch the train. Pack my clothes and come after me. You can join me at the Paddington Station. I shall walk up to Beckenham, and take the first train for town. Here, give this to the servants for me, will you?”

  He took a confused heap of gold and silver from his pocket, and dropped it into
the man’s hand.

  “Nothing wrong at Bulstrode, I hope, sir?” said the servant. “Is Sir John ill?”

  “No, no; I’ve had a letter from my mother — I — you’ll find me at the Great Western.”

  He snatched up his hat, and was hurrying from the room; but the man followed him with his great-coat.

  “You’ll catch your death, sir, on such a night as this,” the servant said, in a tone of respectful remonstrance.

  The banker was standing at the door of the dining-room when Talbot crossed the hall. He was telling a servant to look for his daughter.

  “We are all waiting for Miss Floyd,” the old man said; “we can not begin dinner without Miss Floyd.”

  Unobserved in the confusion, Talbot opened the great door softly, and let himself out into the cold winter’s night. The long terrace was all ablaze with the lights in the high, narrow windows, as upon the night when he had first come to Felden; and before him lay the park, the trees bare and leafless, the ground white with a thin coating of snow, the sky above gray and starless — a cold and desolate expanse, in dreary contrast with the warmth and brightness behind. All this was typical of the crisis of his life. He was leaving warm love and hope for cold resignation or icy despair. He went down the terrace-steps, across the trim garden-walks, and out into that wide, mysterious park. The long avenue was ghostly in the gray light, the tracery of the interlacing branches above his head making black shadows, that flickered to and fro upon the whitened ground beneath his feet. He walked for a quarter of a mile before he looked back at the lighted windows behind him. He did not turn until a wind in the avenue had brought him to a spot from which he could see the dimly-lighted bay-window of the room in which he had left Aurora. He stood for some time looking at this feeble glimmer, and thinking — thinking of all he had lost, or all he had perhaps escaped — thinking of what his life was to be henceforth without that woman — thinking that he would rather have been the poorest ploughboy in Beckenham parish than the heir of Bulstrode, if he could have taken the girl he loved to his heart, and believed in her truth.

  CHAPTER 10

  Fighting the Battle.

  The new year began in sadness at Felden Woods, for it found Archibald Floyd watching in the sick-room of his only daughter.

  Aurora had taken her place at the long dinner-table upon the night of Talbot’s departure, and, except for being perhaps a little more vivacious and brilliant than usual, her manner had in no way changed after that terrible interview in the bay-windowed room. She had talked to John Mellish, and had played and sung to her younger cousins; she had stood behind her father, looking over his cards through all the fluctuating fortunes of a rubber of long whist; and the next morning her maid had found her in a raging fever, with burning cheeks and bloodshot eyes, her long purple-black hair all tumbled and tossed about the pillows, and her dry hands scorching to the touch. The telegraph brought two grave London physicians to Felden before noon, and the house was clear of visitors by night-fall, only Mrs. Alexander and Lucy remaining to assist in nursing the invalid. The West-End doctors said very little. This fever was as other fevers to them. The young lady had caught a cold, perhaps; she had been imprudent, as these young people will be, and had received some sudden chill. She had very likely overheated herself with dancing, or had sat in a draught, or eaten an ice. There was no immediate danger to be apprehended. The patient had a superb constitution; there was wonderful vitality in the system; and, with careful treatment she would soon come round. Careful treatment meant a two-guinea visit every day from each of these learned gentlemen, though, perhaps, had they given utterance to their inmost thoughts, they would have owned that, for all they could tell to the contrary, Aurora Floyd wanted nothing but to be let alone, and left in a darkened chamber to fight out the battle by herself. But the banker would have had all Saville Row summoned to the sick-bed of his child, if he could by such a measure have saved her a moment’s pain; and he implored the two physicians to come to Felden twice a day if necessary, and to call in other physicians if they had the least fear for their patient. Aurora was delirious; but she revealed very little in that delirium. I do not quite believe that people often make the pretty, sentimental, consecutive confessions under the influence of fever which are so freely attributed to them by the writers of romances. We rave about foolish things in those cruel moments of feverish madness. We are wretched because there is a man with a white hat on in the room, or a black cat upon the counterpane, or spiders crawling about the bed-curtains, or a coal-heaver who will put a sack of coals on our chest. Our delirious fancies are like our dreams, and have very little connection with the sorrows or joys which make up the sum of our lives.

  So Aurora Floyd talked of horses and dogs, and masters and governesses; of childish troubles that had afflicted her years before, and of girlish pleasures, which, in her normal state of mind, had been utterly forgotten. She seldom recognized Lucy or Mrs. Alexander, mistaking them for all kinds of unlikely people; but she never entirely forgot her father, and, indeed, always seemed to be conscious of his presence, and was perpetually appealing to him, imploring him to forgive her for some act of childish disobedience committed in those departed years of which she talked so much.

  John Mellish had taken up his abode at the Grayhound Inn, in Croydon High street, and drove every day to Felden Woods, leaving his phaeton at the park-gates, and walking up to the house to make his inquiries. The servants took notice of the Yorkshireman’s pale face, and set him down at once as “sweet” upon their young lady. They liked him a great deal better than Captain Bulstrode, who had been too “‘igh” and “‘aughty” for them. John flung his half-sovereigns right and left when he came to the hushed mansion in which Aurora lay, with loving friends about her. He held the footman who answered the door by the button-hole, and would have gladly paid the man half a crown a minute for his time while he asked anxious questions about Miss Floyd’s health. Mr. Mellish was warmly sympathized with, therefore, in the servants’ hall at Felden. His man had informed the banker’s household how he was the best master in England, and how Mellish Park was a species of terrestrial paradise, maintained for the benefit of trustworthy retainers; and Mr. Floyd’s servants expressed a wish that their young lady might get well, and marry the “fair one,” as they called John. They came to the conclusion that there had been what they called “a split” between Miss Floyd and the captain, and that he had gone off in a huff, which was like his impudence, seeing that their young lady would have hundreds of thousands of pounds by and by, and was good enough for a duke, instead of a beggarly officer.

  Talbot’s letter to Mr. Floyd reached Felden Woods on the 27th of December, but it lay for some time unopened upon the library table. Archibald had scarcely heeded his intended son-in-law’s disappearance in his anxiety about Aurora. When he did open the letter, Captain Bulstrode’s words were almost meaningless to him, though he was just able to gather that the engagement had been broken — by his daughter’s wish, as Talbot seemed to infer.

  The banker’s reply to this communication was very brief; he wrote:

  “MY DEAR SIR — Your letter arrived here some days since, but has only been opened by me this morning. I have laid it aside, to be replied to, D.V., at a future time. At present I am unable to attend to anything. My daughter is seriously ill. “Yours obediently, “ARCHIBALD FLOYD.”

  “Seriously ill!” Talbot Bulstrode sat for nearly an hour with the banker’s letter in his hand, looking at these two words. How much or how little might the sentence mean? At one moment, remembering Archibald Floyd’s devotion to his daughter, he thought that this serious illness was doubtless some very trifling business — some feminine nervous attack, common to young ladies upon any hitch in their love-affairs; but five minutes afterward he fancied that those words had an awful meaning — that Aurora was dying — dying of the shame and anguish of that interview in the little chamber at Felden.

  Heaven above! what had he done? Had he murdered this beautifu
l creature, whom he loved a million times better than himself? Had he killed her with those impalpable weapons, those sharp and cruel words which he had spoken on the 25th of December? He acted the scene over again and again, until the sense of outraged honor, then so strong upon him, seemed to grow dim and confused, and he began almost to wonder why he had quarrelled with Aurora. What if, after all, this secret involved only some school-girl’s folly? No; the crouching figure and ghastly face gave the lie to that hope. The secret, whatever it might be, was a matter of life and death to Aurora Floyd. He dared not try to guess what it was. He tried to close his mind against the surmises that would arise to him. In the first days that succeeded that terrible Christmas he determined to leave England. He would try to get some government appointment that would take him away to the other end of the world, where he could never hear Aurora’s name — never be enlightened as to the mystery that had separated them. But now, now that she was ill — in danger, perhaps — how could he leave the country? How could he go away to some place where he might one day open the English newspapers and see her name among the list of deaths?

  Talbot was a dreary guest at Bulstrode Castle. His mother and his cousin Constance respected his pale face, and held themselves aloof from him in fear and trembling; but his father asked what the deuce was the matter with the boy, that he looked so chapfallen, and why he didn’t take his gun and go out on the moors, and get an appetite for his dinner like a Christian, instead of moping in his own rooms all day long, biting his fingers’ ends.

  Once, and once only, did Lady Bulstrode allude to Aurora Floyd.

  “You asked Miss Floyd for an explanation, I suppose, Talbot?” she said.